Jaquandor once said this about quoting Monty Python at a Renaissance Festival, although this applies just as well to playing D&D:

[…] So it’s with nothing but love and heartfelt concern that I inform you that walking around shouting quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail like “I’m bein’ repressed!” and “Ni!” is the Renaissance Festival equivalent of shouting “Freebird!” at a rock concert. Don’t do this, folks. Wandering through a Renaissance Festival with your friends, pretending to debate the airspeed of an unladen swallow, is just shooting fish in a barrel. Don’t do it.

Having said that, just try to get through this part of the movie without thinking about it. I swear the old woman in panel six is just about to say, “There’s some lovely filth over here.”

Actually, not once during any of the LOTR movies did any MPFC dialog make itself felt inside Mr Brain. It must be an age thing (born before MP&THC). Either that, or repeated exposure to the Lego version of Holy Grail (it’s in the extra features) works the need out of you.

When it’s done with Lego, its done for good.

I’m kind of surprised though that Legoless didn’t try the “Ni!” ploy when they got surrounded by Rohirrim back in “The Name Game”.

Now, I would just like to point out that this thread is displaying a distinct tendency to become SILLY. Now, nobody likes a good laugh more than I do… except, perhaps my wife… and some of her friends. Oh, yes, and Captain Johnson. Come to think of it, most people like a good laugh more than I do, but that’s beside the point! I’m warning this thread NOT to get SILLY again! Right!

This post cannot be seen. It has followed the careful instructions of the video “How Not To Be Seen” and, fearing that it shall be blown to smithereens, has chosen to hide behind some non-shrublike natural feature.

[Meru] Nope. I guess I’ve just had long enough to work the “spontaneous Holy Grail quote” thing out of my system (I am nearly as old as Gandalf and saw the movie at University when it was on general release).

Plus, I’d been waiting so long for LOTR to be competently visualised as a movie (or three) and was so gobsmacked that Jackson’s vision of the scenery was at once so different to mine yet so in accord with it that I never paused to ruin it with a “Rocky Horror” moment.

I’ve only run the DVDs once though, so there’s plenty of time for a change of heart.

Shamus’s version is, of course, a travesty and he should be roundly thrashed for making fun of what is sure to become a cultural icon. No thrashing is too good for him! We should make him into a ladder!

Right now, I am resisting the urge to quote Dennis, because I am 37. And have been mistaken for a woman from a distance. By someone not covered in s**t.

Barely resisting.

I’ll use the line ONCE before I turn 38, and have done with it. It’s part of my – –

my –

Idiom, my liege?

But it occurs to me that the mutual pleasure principle applies to both D&D and MP’sTHGrail. I mean, there are more women playing D&D by now, but at first there were mostly men (some giving life to female NPCs) wandering about looking for a quest/something to hack with their sword/running away from the higher ECL beasty.

That, and that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

Having endured the horrid snuff film of Mel Gobson’s Christ “story”, did any of you go back and watch the Life of Brian again? I still love that one for its darker than dark humour.

I think I looked forward to being serious AND silly, like the Pythons or like the Goblins, which I knew about from TV version of the Hobbit, and watching PBS evening broadcasts of the Flying Circus all got mashed up in me brain. Later, I read all of Tolkien’s Middle Earth works, lots of SciFi (Hello, Gamma World and Cyberpunk!), so it’s never going to be easy to reference oddness in pop culture among nerdly folk. It’s part of our collective experience to do and say goofy things.

This is the funniest yet in a very funny series which I have been enjoying and turning my friends on to. Thank you so much for writing it!

Steve Says:
Shamus’s version is, of course, a travesty and he should be roundly thrashed for making fun of what is sure to become a cultural icon. No thrashing is too good for him! We should make him into a ladder!

Oh! Spanking?! Spank *me*! and then…
(someone had to say it! you all know what comes next!)
Still chuckling,
S

SAURON: The Elves have bled us white! They’ve taken everything we had, and what have they ever given us in return?!
ORC: Poetry?
SAURON: What?
ORC: I said, ‘poetry’.
SAURON: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
SOUTHRON 3: And music.
TROLL: Oh, yeah, lovely music, Sauron I sounds so much better than burping and farting!
SAURON: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you that poetry and music are two things that the Elves have done well with.
URUK-HAI: And the roads!
SAURON: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the poetry, music, and the roads–
SOUTHRON: Rope making?
ORC: Medicine.
SOUTHRON 2: Education.
SAURON: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
SOUTHRON 1: And the wine.
SOUTHRONS: Oh, yes. Yeah…
NAZGUL: Yeah. Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss if we killed all the Elves.
SOUTHRON: They also invented bathing.
TROLL: And it’s safe to walk in the streets in daylight now, Sauron.
NAZGUL: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it. They’re the only ones who could in a Middle-Earth like this!
SOUTHRONS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
SAURON: But apart from the music, the medicine, education, wine, public order, rope making, roads, long-winded poetry, and doing away with our stench, what have the Elves ever done for us?!
ORC: Brought peace?
SAURON: Oh, peace– Shut up!

Sem, you’ve only seen TPB three times? Dang. I’m afraid if you’re a Python fan, or a LoTR fan, you also have to be a PB fan. Sorry, that’s the Way It Is. Mandatory line-quoting and all. Anything else is simply inconceivable.

[Shamus] As a matter of interest, have you ever tried shooting fish in a barrel?

Never mind that whole “refractive index throwing off the actual position of the target” nonsense, consider the following obastcles to spacially constrained piscine assassination.

You have to hold the firearm up so high you will either drop it in the barrel after the recoil of the first shot almost breaks your wrist – assuming you use a pistol – or if you use a longarm you will end up with a broken jaw when the stock jumps out from under your arm, then you’ll drop the firearm in the barrel.

Even if you get the shot off by some cunning ploy, such as standing on another upturned barrel, you will be soaked by the splashback and possibly maimed or killed when the round ricochets off the concrete under the barrel base. The barrel staves might even give way due to the hydraulic shock of a modern, high-velocity bullet smacking into the fifty or so gallons of rainwater in the barrel, which will cause the barrel to burst, knock you off whatever you are standing on, get you soaked and make your neighbours laugh at you.

A clever person might suggest firing through the side-bung. This will only cause the cork to spall and result in yet another soaking and guaranteed ridiculing from the buggers next door.

I think, on the face of it, you should rephrase that to “easier than nipping down the fish mongers and buying a fish wrapped in paper”.

There’s no rule that the fish in the aforementioned barrel are immersed in _water_, which is noted for slowing and deflecting bullets/other projectiles. That they are in or out of water is left out of the saying. Our tendency to assume fish are in water is badly designed to negotiate their continued well-being in any type of barrel. I keep my fish in a pond, for the record.

I always assumed that the muzzle blast would be enough to do the job in the event there is water as well as fish. That’s where a lot of wasted energy goes, anyway. The fish have no adaptive resistance to gunfire, in any case.

I have often pondered if the saying came from loosing such a barrel from a trebuchet – “why, it’s like launching fish in a barrel!”

I have to wonder aloud how many of you self-proclaimed Princess Bride fans have read the book. I have no wish to enter into a quarrel, nor to question your man/womanhood, but if you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor, go buy it. If ever there was a book better than the movie, this is it, and it’s a pretty shiny movie to begin with! I watch it every time I’m sick. I’ve seen it so many times, I’m starting to watch it in Spanish. It adds a new depth of hilarity to hear, in the midst of a string of foreign language that I can’t possibly separate into words, the name “Humperdink” spoken with a heavy accent. Oh, but I was talking about the book. Go get it.